Mylenium

*lol* Could just as well be the Rheingold Express. At least for some time the also had a purple livery. Mylenium Should this even matter? It could just as well be some hidden island somewhere. Just sayin'... Mylenium

He might actually enjoy that. Who even knows whether there's a secret LEGO vault in the Kremlin? ;-) With an estimated personal wealth of several billion he could be one of LEGOs biggest customers.... Mylenium

Given the limitations of current LEGO digital construction tools and the associated publishing tools that would be a nightmare to deal with. And I agree with @M_longer - for ten versions it might still be okay when done manually, but for more than that you spend more time on manipulating the docs than creating your next MOC. Also eventually you will simply lose track plus there's generally only so many ways to skin a cat. At some point it will get massively frustrating. I also wouldn't underestimate the counterfeiters. For technical reasons to control the printing process they are likely to rebuild the instructions to their own needs and specs and once they get a whiff of your manipulations, they could just eliminate them. you simply wouldn't ever know. Mylenium

Yes/ No/ Perhaps/ Maybe/ Maybe never. There are no simple answers here. In legal terms the damage to the IP holder's rights would have to be "substantial" and then it's an open question whether this means actual financial damage, damage to their reputation, trespassing on their business relationships and so on. In fact spinning this just on replicating the design would many times be the weakest case, as other legal interpretations might come before that and be more appropriate. And then of course it becomes a matter of how a trademark, design or patent is actually protected and how the IP holder enforces his rights. As I said, this can hypothetically be discussed ad infinitum, but the truth is that you won't know how it turns out until you have a concrete case with relevant details that would allow to form an opinion. Mylenium You could sue them, but of course your chances in a Chinese court a close to non-existant. If LEGO can't make it stick, what are the chances? Otherwise I don't see much you can do. The crux of it is that by promoting your MOCs you may actually be weakening your case by releasing too much info unwittingly and then they can claim they merely "got inspired" and rebuilt the model with minor modifications from scratch. We all know that's not how things really are, but that's how they're gonna spin it, no doubt. Mylenium

Just mentioning a brand name doesn't constitute a legal abuse and re-creating a design for limited (personal) use using a different medium is in the strictest sense seen as creating "art" in most legal systems. The rest is up to the IP holders and how far they tolerate these uses. Mylenium Well said! Mylenium

You need to study up on legal basics. Copyright is intrinsic and inherent to everything you create. You don't need to explicitly assign it to anything. That being the case, yes, even building instructions have a copyright, even if only a weak case can be made for them. Mylenium Not necessarily. It seems to me that's the general issue with discussions about copyrights/ trademarks/ design patents/ technical patents. Everybody seems to assume there would be an inherent magic in the legalese and that it could used in a broad swing like a club. The devil is all in the details. In your case possibly the "spare parts rule" could be applied, depending on which country you live in and if it's a recognized legal procedure. It could be perfectly legit and even if it isn't - wouldn't it be up to your customs authorities to not let counterfeited stuff in then? This could be discussed endlessly. Mylenium

I don't think this has changed much, but a lot of stuff is simply drowning in the noise and flood of ever new stuff on a big forum such as this one. And naturally, the forum mechanics aren't really favorable around here... It's as much a technical problem as it is one of the actual content. That aside, if you hang around any forum of any kind long enough, it will eventually get boring and repetitive, making you feel disillusioned because you've heard it all before and topics that you once enjoyed are being discussed to death over and over again. My 2 Cents. Mylenium

The dilemma of any creative person, I guess. I feel the pain, though I've never let myself get dragged down too much by considerations of what's better and a more efficient use of my time. It's that old "Art simply is." thing and as long as you have any creative outlets, I wouldn't worry too much whether that's LEGO or something else. And since you still seem to be rather young - there will be plenty of time to write books and paint paintings. Do what's closest to your heart now and what gives you the most satisfaction and by all means don't make any of this depoendent on an academic education or whatever just on the vague chance you might do any of that professionally. Life has a way of taking you in unexpected directions... Mylenium

All and none at the same time?! Dunno, but it really depends too much on what you're after. There are some really nice sets like the Claas Xerion that everyone just loves, but as far as I am concerned, things deviate rather quickly from mainstream tastes. I found e.g. the Arocs rather boring and much more enjoyed the Extreme Adventure (42060). Conversely, living in an area where coal mining used to be a thing I just don't get any kicks out of the Bucket Wheel Excavator (42055) because it just doesn't look realistic, though a lot of others just seem to love it. On the other hand I got some enjoyment out of the B-model for set 42077, the sand buggy. In the end it's still a typical case of "your mileage may vary", especially since you already have done most of the better, bigger sets. Once you move on from there, many things will simply feel lesser and inferior and you must find something special to derive some enjoyment from it. Mylenium

There can simply be no such thing. Unless you establish a full ePub system with a "circle of trust", heavy encryption and whatnot you have no control over who views and distributes your content. And even then - who's to say that the biggest criminal isn't one of your most loyal paying customers? I don't see this working particularly well, especially since with a crowdfunding model you have to wait forever until anything gets released. You may think you have the greatest MOC on the planet, but very few people might actually want to buy your instructions and then what? Hold it back from publishing until next Christmas? I could see this working occasionally on some truly high-quality models on a case-by-case basis where people would voluntarily be willing to pay an amount X anyway and wait patiently, but not as a fundamental change in how to distribute MOC instructions or least of all prevent copying/ counterfeiting. Mylenium

It sure looks nice enough, but 20 bucks sounds like severely stretching the price/ part ratio to the max. If it ever comes out in Europe I could imagine it as a 10 Euros set or free promo item, but not much beyond that. Mylenium

Doesn't look very Friends-y to me. It's more or less just a traditional Diesel locomotive in a slightly unusual color. If you wanted to make it fit in with the actual Friends overall design philosophy, it would have to be changed considerably, like e.g. substituting more grey elements for different colors, changing the proportions of the windshield/ upper section and all that good stuff. Also the train wouldn't have any exhaust vents because it would run on flower-scented water or electrically... :-) Mylenium

Nice model! Mylenium

Looks lovely... Mylenium

Not in my experience. Depending on what parts you use and how they are transformed this can end up all as a jumble. It still depends too much on how much time you can devote to this. There's simply that crazy little thing called "your other life" sometimes getting in the way. At least I couldn't see myself hacking together something in this short timeframe that would make for a set I would be willing to put out there publicly. I like to take my time and verify that a model actually "works" and I can only spend so many hours a week with LEGO. I'm pretty sure that other people feel the same. Mylenium

Good for you, I guess? But imagine us poor saps who need to save money for every bit of LEGO they buy. Also, regardless of this, I still measure a MOC by certain standards and one of those includes how viable it would be to rebuild it from parts in my own arsenal and/ or how realistically it could be turned into a commercial MOC or official LEGO set. I think you would agree that at least the latter criteria isn't met with anything that has more than three or four motors. But that's the point, isn't it? I wouldn't call plugging on a motor with a direct drive to every function a challenge. Granted, these days there's a lot of linear synchronized motors used on industrial machines where there would have been a gear train in the past, but I don't think that doing the same on a Technic model is in any way adequate. More the opposite - to me the whole point is to find solutions that are clever and kinda non-obvious on first sight plus the models need to look nice. A compact model with only limited functions, yet smartly put together impresses me more than a 14 motor monstrosity that I could never hope to build nor would want to build. Mylenium

Agree once more. Mylenium

Well, in my little world September 18 to November 18 is just two months. I've also laid out some more thoughts on my blog: https://myleniumsbrickcorner.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/afol-and-bust/ Mylenium

I feel the same. I'm always surprised how little of an effort some people make to optimze their setups. Mylenium I don't really agree. I don't know enough about the internal workings of your models, but I'm pretty sure at least some of them could be optimized, judging from the available videos. Of course it's a lot more complicated to develop complex drive trains than just plug on a motor with an axle, which to me most often seems to be the only reason why people use motors excessively. Mylenium

With that tight a schedule, probably not much will be coming of it. Mylenium

I did and frankly I think you are simply trying to see something that isn't in there. Nowhere do they ever state concrete sales figures for individual series or sets even, only the typical generic press release hogwash and some percentages that quickly look a lot less impressive when you do the actual math. That aside I never said that Friends would be unimportant in the overall scheme, I just can't see how for a series that only accounts for a fraction of LEGOs overall revenue and whose importance has been dwindling not just these last two years, you can see a "dip" or even go so far as to attribute LEGO's current financial not-so-wellbeing to Friends being in crisis. I maintain: It was probably never as important to begin with and the rest is just LEGO's own fault. Well, whatever, I'm sure we could discuss this for the next few months, but this is the last I'm saying about the subject. I'll retreat from this thread for good. See you another time... Mylenium

You must be reading other numbers and opinions than I do. Of course I'm more than willing to admit that not being part of the core target demographic I have a different view, anyway. I don't know anyone who actually likes the minidolls and even the little girls from the neighborhood much prefer their Playmobil fairies and horse rider girls. Even the sales numbers seem wrong. At least there's no way to reliably coroborate your claims to the popularity of individual sets or product series beyond "Yes, Friends is making LEGO some money.". Well, whatever. I'm not going to debate the issue further and let's just leave it at that. Mylenium

There is no dip. Friends was/ is just not as popular as you always seem to assume. It always comes back to that, regardless in how many threads we seem to be discussing this endlessly. And making this about ethnic/ racial issues is just pointless. Most people would happily just burn their minidolls on a pyre regardless of how they look. They're just extremely unpopular. Mylenium

Real 3D AO is not "fake". The only difference is that it a) limits the sample radius, b) generally assumes a uniform lighting model and c) does not necessarily account for secondary properties like surface color. Typically the assumption of it being/ looking "fake" is a combination of these things like e.g. people forcing too small sample radii to make their AO darker - it's not a limitation of the math, it's just the clipping returning an "invalid" result, meaning black. 2D screen space AO methods are another matter entirely of course, but we're not talking about games here, obviously. Mylenium

AO is just a simplified subset of full radiosity, so I'm not sure what this would achieve or why it should be missing. If you enable full radiosity in most programs you effectively override AO. If at all it then would be just a secondary pass or at the shader level to increase contrast. That aside it's an open question of whether to use any of that at all. Many of my more realistic renderers as a commercial 3D artist were/ are just complex light setups with finely tweaked materials and neither radiosity nor AO ever having been used. Mylenium